Sofas and #2 Pencils

"Still the Same Song to Me" By Chris Chandler, David Rovics, Samantha Parton

At times I feel inmeshed in the loneliness and longing of all things,

asking myself what would I rather be?

THE WORDS HAVE CHANGED ON THE WATER TOWER

IN THE TOWN WHERE WE FIRST MET

IT STILL FEELS LIKE I'M COMIN HOME

IT'S BEEN YEARS SINCE I LEFT

I wonder if inanimate objects ask the same questions.

PLAY ME A SONG ON THE GUITAR

THE ONE MY GRANDMA USED TO SING

THOUGH SHE PLAYED IT ON PIANO

IT'S STILL THE SAME SONG TO ME

sometimes I'm convinced that

an exhausted sofa will sigh, longing to be a hammock swaying in a tropical breeze, tethered between two palm trees

the hammock sighs longing to be a magnificent bed in a luxury hotel in a great city while two Champaign sipping sophisticates meet for an elicit tryst

the cigarette lighter they use after there stolen hour sighs in a crazed desire to be the eternal flame that illuminates a graveyard of forgotten soldiers who gave there life in a forgotten war

the forgotten war sighs "I wish I were just a quiet evening at home."

I hear the loneliness and longing of all things

THERE IS A DIFFERENT FAMILY ON THE FRONT PORCH

IN THE HOUSE WHERE I GREW UP

BUT THAT DON'T MEAN I'M NOT THE SAME GIRL

THAT I WAS WHEN I GAVE YOU MY LOVE

and I wonder do the practical #2 pencils of accountants fantasize about drawing bawdy pictures of urban sophisticates in a luxury hotel

does the luxury hotel dream of dropping it's facade of rectitude and becoming a flop house quartering a poet sprawled on an exhausted sofa composing brilliant, unpublishable verse while being pestered by bill collectors on telephones which grow disgusted of tormenting the multitudes for niggling sums so that those telephones begin orating the sermon on the mount.

Does the sermon on the mount really want to be a Vegas lounge act?

PLAY ME A SONG ON THE GUITAR

what if there was a great awakening of atoms

THE ONE MY GRANDMA USED TO SING

where they all remembered their vast and intricate histories,

THOUGH SHE PLAYED IT ON PIANO

an Atomic explosion of memory

IT'S STILL THE SAME SONG TO ME

we might hear the tale of a fleck of floating lint that had once been a part of a soldiers boot lace that he gave to his beloved to lace her corset the night before he died in a forgotten battle in a forgotten war.

A fleck of lint that was once part of the molecular structure of the linen sheets in a luxury hotel lying beneath the skin of a cheetah, now reduced to being a bed spread, yet some how evolved into an alley cat which was gutted to became strings of violins that entertained elegant guests in a luxury hotel

THAT OLD CHURCH DOWN ON THE CORNER

WELL, IT'S NOW A CIRCLE K

GRAND MA SHE WAS LAID TO REST THERE

I STILL GO DOWN THERE TO PRAY

PLAY ME A SONG ON THE GUITAR

THE ONE MY GRANDMA USED TO SING

THOUGH SHE PLAYED IT ON PIANO

IT'S STILL THE SAME SONG TO ME

That fleck of lint now has nothing but time on it's hands

to float in the air and sing

of love of beauty and mythical beast of poverty of sadness of luxury and that fleck of lint drifts into your beer unnoticed

which you drink down and it sees the

joys and sorrows of your life and you are

buried forgotten in the earth and rise as

grass, which is eaten by cows who go to

slaughter and are served in a luxury hotel

and washed down with a beer and you, my friend, get to see Saturday night all over again.